Month: March 2016

In my fantasy world, the Hungry Moon ushers in the thaw. Days lengthen, trees blossom and nature knits an emerald coverlet over the wilderness. The blues and grays of winter surrender to a tapestry of fresh color, and the sun rolls around like an old friend. Yet, this is a hungry time, winter’s stores dwindling, the cellars and cupboards bare. The fields lie sodden and fallow, new crops a distant dream. The warming sun promises fiddleheads and dandelion greens, nettle and chickweed, wild pickings filling aprons for empty bellies. For the poor, it’s a thin, lean time, a cruel tease of the spring to come.

Excerpt from the Hungry Moon, Eye of Blind, Dragon Soul Saga

The hut warm, Starling listened to the timbre of Gallard’s voice, his feelings carried through the air. She heard the news as a faint echo, translating facts and events into an emotional unfolding, layered with nuance, thick, rich, and threaded with light. She barely saw bodies anymore, or faces, or remembered names. They comprised the trappings of essence. How else could she think of it? They glittered as if fashioned of stars.

She’d always called herself a Death Droom, and here she’d found there was no death. Merging with the dragons had fundamentally changed her. She no longer saw the faces of light descending so beautifully and peacefully to accompany the dying. Rather, she witnessed the infinity of soul, the stardust, color, and light that transformed but never altered. Spiraling circles of life, generation upon generation of birth and death, and yet the spirit remained unbound. The essence existed outside of form, vibrating in the void. She slowly became the World’s sublime song, losing a sense of her body and drifting more in otherness, oneness. At times, she believed she could walk through trees, dissolve into water, fragment and fly away on beams of light.

The ironwood pier below Mur-Vallis pointed like a sooty finger over the Blackwater’s swirling luminescence. Wraiths of fog pirouetted across the surface, trailing veils of white lace. Raker lounged against the piling where he’d tethered his boat, keeping an idle eye out for thieves. Not that anyone would bother his craft this night, not with finer prizes left unattended. Well-rigged riverboats and ferries floated at the wharf, thunking and clinking above the current’s hushed whispers.

With a bone-handled knife, he whittled splinters from a wood waterdragon no larger than his thumb. The solitude suited him, removed from the chaos of the warrens that crowded the dingy expanse below the city’s lowest tier. The welcome there was cold anyway, harsh enough to get a half-blood gutted. His slanted eyes, blue as rime, and three-fingered hands gave his heritage away.

The three pylons supporting Mur-Vallis soared into the vast night sky. Their lighted tiers lay open like petals on an alien flower, soft-edged and overlapping, the upper layers diminishing in size while increasing in opulence.

Or so he’d heard. No one he knew had climbed higher than the first tier, and then only for a hanging.

This is a new website, but the fantasy books here count 9, so a few of them have been around awhile. 2016 is a busy year with lofty goals for a new series as well as updating previously published books.

I decided at the end of 2015 to take back my books from my traditional publisher. I know readers often use the “traditionally published” achievement as a benchmark for quality, but I’m going to buck that assumption a bit. My books are stuck with typos, average covers, and prices that I have no control over.

As my books fall back into my inky fingers, I’m fixing those aggravating typos, they’re getting fabulous new covers by the talented Jennifer Munswami, and I’m lowering prices! All good news for readers!

So where am I?

TheSorcerer’s Garden– done

The Bone Wall– done.

Five Elements Anthology – no changes here.

The Melding of Aeris– newly released March 25, 2016.

Sunwielder – newly released May 15, 2016.

The Dragon Soul Quartet: was newly released as a four-book “quartet” on August 20, 2016. Myths of the Mirror can be read as a stand-alone, but also kicks off a longer adventure. They are available individually and as a bundle.

My Work in Progress is another four-book serial entitled The Rose Shield (for now). The first book is almost done, the second has gone through two drafts, and the last two are in outline form. Without a hard deadline, they’re waiting until the other books are all updated and ready to go. My goal is to return to them again in July and begin releases at the beginning of the new year.